"Bankruptcy everywhere; foul ignominy, and the abomination of desolation, in all high places: odious to look upon, as the carnage of a battle-field on the morrow morning; […]"

"A Government tumbling and drifting on the whirlpools and mud-deluges, floating atop in a conspicuous manner, no-whither, — like the carcass of a drowned ass."

In an essay published anonymously a few weeks before, Carlyle finds contemporary social affairs "in a state of the frightfulest embroilment, and as it were of inextricable final bankruptcy", an "unutterable welter of tumbling ruins".